The Other-Harm Extortion Gang
The Uisong Sect inner disciple—his jaw hideously shredded by scales—writhed on the ground. Blood and scraps of flesh spattered across the Gyeongha Hall courtyard, but Han Yuhyeon raised his scales and charged the fallen disciple to finish the job for good.
"Enough! That is enough!"
A middle-aged man from the Uisong Sect who had been watching from afar shot forward and planted himself in Han Yuhyeon's path.
"It is well and good for disciples to test their arts against one another, but is this not rather excessive for a place to which one has been invited?"
The Uisong Sect elder was a crafty old hand. He had neatly rebranded what had been an attempted shakedown into something wholesome—a friendly spar to compare techniques. Of course, every cultivator who had watched the whole affair knew it was pure sleight of hand, but in this world the word of the strong was truth itself.
"It seems our disciple may have spoken out of turn as well. Withdraw now, and I will not take you to task for going too far. Stand down."
The elder was shameless. As if those inner disciples had picked a fight with another sect entirely on their own. The elders had clearly put them up to it, and still he stood there denying everything. Han Yuhyeon nodded.
"Then this junior will heed his senior and stop."
"A wise decision."
"But I don't think I can walk away empty-handed."
"Hm?"
The elder's face, which had relaxed in the belief that the matter was settled, contorted at once. Han Yuhyeon spoke without a shred of shame.
"Your side picked the fight first and demanded we show sincerity. If the Uisong Sect has any face left to save, shouldn't you know how to show a little sincerity yourselves when you lose and back down?"
Scattered laughter broke out around them. By the laws of the cultivation world, Han Yuhyeon was not wrong in the slightest. Smoothing over a fight like this really did require a token of sincerity. The only unusual part was that an inner disciple from a Yeongil-ju sect was making the demand of an elder from a So-ui-ju sect.
"Elder Seok! That junior's words are not wrong in the least!"
A mocking shout rang out from someone who clearly knew the man. So-ui-ju sects were hardly a united front. More often than not they were bound by old grudges or simply could not stand one another. So of course there were plenty of sects happy to sneer at the Uisong Sect. The man called Elder Seok flushed crimson and pulled a pouch from his storage pouch. He seemed to have realized that dragging this out any longer would do his sect no good.
"There! Is this enough?"
Han Yuhyeon opened the silk pouch Elder Seok had shoved at him right then and there. About fifty low-grade spirit stones. Not a bad haul for a single provocation. Han Yuhyeon grinned from ear to ear.
"Not bad."
"You lot will regret the day you insulted the Uisong Sect."
Elder Seok tucked the blood-soaked inner disciple under one arm and vanished in a huff.
Baekri-wan, who had watched the entire sequence of events, spoke the moment it was over.
"How have you managed to live this long with that face?"
"Pardon?"
"I did not expect someone to pick a fight the moment we stepped outside."
"You get used to it. Even if the sky falls, there's always a hole to crawl out of. Having your face fall apart is relatively the better situation, don't you think?"
"How positive of you."
Han Yuhyeon stole a glance at Baekri-wan. She was quick on the uptake and caught it at once.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Ah. I was just wondering if you were uncomfortable."
"About what?"
"In a way, I used you as bait."
"Better to have a fight picked than to have people sweet-talking me and trying to get close."
That was a reassuring answer. Then again, having fights picked was simply daily life in the cultivation world. With the average cultivator's character being what it was, this kind of thing was almost comfortable.
"So this is how you intend to walk around collecting spirit stones. With my face, people will keep picking fights."
"Exactly right. How about we split the stones nine to one? Since I'm the one fighting, nine for me seems fair, doesn't it?"
Baekri-wan stared at him flatly. Han Yuhyeon quietly averted his eyes.
"Too stingy? Then eight to two… No, wait. Then I'm taking too much of a loss."
"Forget it. Keep all of it."
"Really?"
"Yes."
Han Yuhyeon hopped in place with delight at that. Baekri-wan gave a short snort of laughter. That was the upper limit of her smile.
"Then let's make the rounds. To where the other sects are lodging. Looks like we're going to rake in a solid haul."
"Is it not dangerous, though? Among the sects of So-ui-ju considered prestigious, quite a few of their inner disciples have reached Foundation Establishment."
"Didn't see any. At least not at Gyeongha Hall. All of them were trash."
"You recognized all of them?"
"No. I didn't recognize a single one. That's exactly why. If they were a famous sect, I would have known them."
His voice was brimming with confidence. Baekri-wan nodded without protest.
"That is true enough. There was nothing particularly worth being wary of."
"Right?"
"But I am surprised you know that. So-ui-ju is vastly larger than Yeongil-ju. Knowing the famous sects there is not ordinary knowledge."
Her gaze sharpened. Han Yuhyeon flinched. He might have shown too much of what he knew. It was a depth of knowledge of a different order from simply knowing the location of a cultivator market.
"Ahem, ahem. Would solving that little curiosity of yours help your cultivation or training right now, Elder?"
He said it with a sly grin. Even so, how was he supposed to explain that this world was a game, and that he had cleared it several times?
"It would not."
"Then it would be proper for me not to answer."
"But your citation is wrong."
"Pardon?"
"Unlike you, I am more than capable of handling whatever is behind you."
Han Yuhyeon's heart lurched. That was confidence. The confidence that she could handle him no matter what faction he was entangled with. Confidence like that did not come from a cultivator who merely held an elder's seat in a Yeongil-ju sect.
"That said, I will not ask. You do not seem to want to talk about it, so there is no need to pry."
Baekri-wan flicked her long hair and strode ahead of him.
Once again he found himself curious about what lay behind Baekri-wan—but he, too, had just clearly realized something. Right now, Han Yuhyeon could not handle what was behind Baekri-wan.
She was clearly different from ordinary cultivators. She had just refused a share of the spirit stones, and she had spoken of trust—a value long since dead in the cultivation world. Whatever her background was, it was no ordinary one.
"Shall we go, then."
Han Yuhyeon deliberately lightened his voice to ease the slightly awkward air.
And when they ran into other cultivation sects, he used ventriloquism to speak to Baekri-wan.
"Elder Baek. That much won't get a fight started. Teeth. Smile and show your teeth. When I looked in the mirror, that was the look that made me most want to punch myself. No, not like that—more of a buck-toothed snarl… Ahh, perfect. That's the one."
"…"
Baekri-wan stared at Han Yuhyeon—who had flipped into full director mode mid-stride—as if she could not believe what she was hearing.
In truth, whatever background Baekri-wan had did not matter much to him. Right now, she was simply a provocation doll.
Using provocation doll Baekri-wan as bait for a self-harm extortion scheme—no, wait, they weren't harming themselves, they were beating the other side, so maybe it was an other-harm extortion gang? Anyway, business concluded in spectacular triumph.
They made a full circuit of the sect grounds, and every faction they ran into took one look at Baekri-wan's face and started something. Han Yuhyeon cleaned up every last one of those inner disciples. There were cases where an elder was mixed in with the group, but fortunately none of them stepped in. Han Yuhyeon was an inner disciple of the Baekun Sect of Yeongil-ju, and they were at least keeping up appearances.
He opened his pouch and counted the spirit stones. So-ui-ju really did have scale—the settlement money was sweet. The total he had gathered came to over eight hundred low-grade spirit stones. With only about twenty sects that had picked a fight, it was a natural sum.
"Elder Baek. We made this much."
"…Well done."
Baekri-wan had not fought herself, but she had been selling her face nonstop and looked exhausted. Then again, being treated as an enemy for no reason other than one's appearance was no ordinary ordeal; of course it was mentally draining.
Especially since Baekri-wan was a beauty who would normally have received unearned kindness wherever she went. When would someone like her ever have experienced this?
"Elder Baek. Here. You said you wouldn't take any, but you're the MVP—I can't not give you something."
Han Yuhyeon roughly counted out about sixty spirit stones and held them out to her. Baekri-wan waved them off with a look of pure fatigue. It was not modesty; she genuinely looked too tired, so he simply put them away.
"The other sects of So-ui-ju will be looking at the Baekun Sect very differently from now on."
"Mostly with dislike, I assume?"
"Do you even need to ask?"
Han Yuhyeon laughed hard at Baekri-wan's weary reply. After shaking them down for spirit stones, of course relations would not be good.
"But only by weathering this kind of hostility can the Baekun Sect truly soft-land in So-ui-ju. Mmm-hmm."
"Do not talk as if you did it for the Baekun Sect. It was your greed for spirit stones."
"It's both. If we had kept our heads down the whole time like the Sect Master first said, the Baekun Sect would never have made it into So-ui-ju. I can guarantee that."
"Fine. You are right."
Setting everything else aside, the exhausted Baekri-wan looked as if she wanted to tear the mask off that very second. That feeling was something only Han Yuhyeon could understand. Simply wearing an ugly face chewed away at your mental strength by the second.
"You really worked hard today."
"Yes."
When Baekri-wan, shoulders sagging, went into her room and shut the door, Han Yuhyeon finally headed for his own.
"Heheheh."
The moment he closed his door, laughter he could no longer hold back slipped out.
So-ui-ju really was far more lucrative than Yeongil-ju. Back in Yeongil-ju, even if he spent a whole day picking fights like this, he probably could not have scraped together a hundred low-grade spirit stones. Here he had earned eight hundred. Of course, the special circumstances of a multi-sect gathering had to be factored in, but the income still exceeded expectations.
A thousand lowest-grade spirit stones made one low-grade, and a thousand low-grade made one mid-grade—so he had enough money to buy the Blood Shadow Nine Nights Sword.
He had fretted that the purchase might fail if he had not converted to mid-grade stones, but fortunately it seemed to auto-convert; the clink of spirit stones confirmed the buy.
He closed the Mongan Hyeolseo, rummaged through his storage pouch, and drew out the Blood Shadow Nine Nights Sword—a crimson hilt and a pure white blade.
"Ahh."
Unlike murim, in the world of immortal cultivation the sword was closer to a niche weapon. The sheer scarcity of sword arts that actually trained the blade proved as much.
Even so, was there any weapon more romantic than the sword? As a gamer he had thought the same and used swords quite often, and the Blood Shadow Nine Nights Sword had been one of them.
In a way, this was the first time he had obtained his main armament from his player days. That pure white blade would grow redder the more blood it drank.
I should pick up a decent sword art to go with it.
Come to think of it, he needed a sword art that suited the Blood Shadow Nine Nights Sword, and he still had to fulfill the request from the Dang family elder while he was in the Yu Kingdom—delivering the Longevity Lock. He had nearly forgotten until he dug through his storage pouch just now.
Of course, those were matters for after the sect gathering that began tomorrow had ended.